Rotational diffusion and solvatochromic correlation of coumarin 6 laser dye

Abstract

Rotational diffusion of coumarin 6 (C6) laser dye has been examined in n-decane and methanol as a function of temperature. The rotational reorientation of this probe has been measured in these solvents. It is observed that the decrease in viscosity of the solution is responsible for the decrease in the rotational relaxation time of the probe molecule. The molecule C6 has long reorientation times in n-decane solvent as compared to methanol over all temperatures. It is found that the coumarin 6 rotates slower in n-decane than in methanol especially at higher values of viscosity over temperature. Two methods are chosen to determine the ground state and excited state dipole moments. The change in dipole moments is estimated from Bakhshiev-Chamma-Viallet equations and, the ground and excited state dipole moments from Kawski et al. equations, by using the variations of the Stokes shifts with the dielectric constant and refractive index of the solvent. Our results are quite reliable which are solvatochromic correlation obtained using solvent polarity functions. The reported results show that excited state dipole moment is greater than ground state dipole moment, which indicates that the excited state is more polar than the ground state. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006.